Thursday, October 21, 2010

Mr. Negative

This has not been a good week; either for work or for me at CrossFit. This has been one of those weeks at work where everything seems to go wrong, all while pulling me in 20 different directions. Then you throw in a couple frustrating days in the gym, and I was more than happy to say Fuck it all, eat a big plate of pasta and pass out on the couch last night.

I was thinking about detailing my struggles with Tuesday’s WOD. But looking at my last few posts; it seems like I do a lot of bitching. So instead, I figured maybe I should spend a little time on a couple of the small victories, the things that keep me coming back to the box.

One month down, and I am 10lbs lighter. This is with no appreciable change in diet. Well, on 2nd thought, maybe there has been a bit of a change.

1 – Portion Size, especially at dinner. Sure I was eating healthy food, but I was eating a lot of it.

2 – Ice Cream, I don’t have a weakness for many sweets. But I would have no problem downing a pint of Ben & Jerry’s every damn night given the chance. I may not have actually done this, but I sure did think about it.

3 – Fast Food on the Weekends, This has to be the one that bugged me the most. For about the 1st 5 years after college, I didn’t touch the stuff. But the past couple years in Pittsburgh, it seemed like just about every weekend I hit 1 or more fast food joints. This only got worse this past summer, with me splitting time between Pittsburgh and Raleigh.

So what changed (without any conscious effort).

1 – Portion size decreased. I have been doing the down a glass of water thing to curb your appetite for years. But now, when I finish a workout I am downing water like a camel. There just isn’t room in my stomach for a 2nd helping of dinner.

2 – I’ve had ice cream twice. Both times were nights when the wife and I went out to dinner and stopped for desert.

3 – Well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

Throw in the conscious effort that I have made to eat more vegetables with my lunch, and snack on nuts rather than peanut butter crackers, and I’m doing alright.

I wasn’t last to finish, or have the worst time on a couple of WOD’s

This happened a couple of times last week. But the one that really sticks out in my mind was Friday’s workout. Friday we did a team workout. We paired up in teams of 2 to go through a workout consisting of rope climb (pull up mod for a couple of us), push ups, medicine ball cleans and 100m ball run, as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes, alternating partners every round.

Looking at the teams, one stood out to me as the one to watch. Lori and Shaunie are two of the ladies at CrossFit coastal who seem to kick ass every day that I work out with them. I was teamed up with Tyson, another relative newcomer, who I only knew from the results of the Warrior dash, where he kicked some serious ass.

I figured that the two of us would come in a distant 2nd to the ladies. But when Tyson came running in on the 1st round with a 25m lead over Lori I was bound and determined not to let Shaunie pass me.

I have to admit that the mod on the rope climb probably gave me a sizable advantage over Shaunie. And carrying around an extra 20lbs when you are my size isn’t that big of a deal compared to someone who looks like they weigh 110lbs (disclaimer, I am horrible at guestimating weights of people).

All that said, I was feeling a real adrenalin rush when I maintained that initial lead through my 1st round. I had a slight hick-up in the 2nd as Will stopped me to correct my form in the medicine ball cleans, negating any gains that Tyson had accrued in his 2nd round, but not enough to give up the lead.

Round 3 was uneventful, by round 4 Tyson had stretched the lead to 50m, but I was fading. With my biggest problem being my push-ups as my shoulder was burning.

As Tyson hit the push-ups in round 5, I looked at the clock, and just under 4 minutes remained. I was completely gassed, and was hoping that he would stretch out the last few exercises to eat up the time. But being the endurance athlete he is, he wrapped things up with well over 2 minutes left.

Somehow I dug deep and found the energy to blast through 3 more rope pull ups. Then I hit the push-ups and 5 reps in my shoulder gave (remember I mentioned that I couldn’t sleep Friday and Saturday night thanks to my shoulder). I hit the mat, and almost gave. But with Tyson and will shouting encouragement, I muscled through some sissy push-ups to just keep moving.

I finished up the round with a little under 30 seconds left on the clock, and Tyson, being the freak that he is, flew through a rope climb and the push-ups as the rest of us gasped for air.

We may have tied for most rounds completed in our class, but in my mind we were the winners. It was a great feeling after being the guy to lower the curve for the whole class for the previous month.

It was just a small victory, but god damn, if typing this up hasn’t gotten me pumped up for tonight’s class. Maybe I should be concentrating on the small victories more, than the failures (even if the stories aren’t as funny).